Multinova reported in a previous post that the game “Aurora Feint” actually went through your contacts and sent them to a server unencrypted. Well, Apple has removed Aurora Feint from the App Store for obvious security reasons. Click the link for details and excerpts.An article on Gizmodo states:
Remember that Aurora Feint Puzzle/RPG game that we told you we liked? Turns out we don’t like it anymore. In fact, we’re actually pretty damn scared of this app, seeing as Apple de-listed them from the App Store due to privacy and security issues. To the developer’s credit, they were forthright with what they did and didn’t do.
According to their forums, if you opt-in to the community feature, Aurora Feint looks through your contact list, sends it unencrypted to their servers, and matches you up with your friends who are currently playing right now. Great feature, for sure, but that whole looking through our contact list and sending it in plain text to your server is cause for us to go OMGWTFBBQ.
When we discovered that the Apple SDK allowed us to look through your contact list we thought it would be a great idea to automatically show you which friends are playing the game. Why automatically? Well, everyone always complains about the keyboard on the iPhone and how annoying it is to type on it. So we thought, “Hey, why don’t we make this feature REALLY easy to use – no typing!” And such, the community feature was born. Some people have said that it would have been ok if we had a better notice explaining what was going on. I agree! We weren’t trying to be sneaky about how this worked. It was just overlooked. No one we showed it to even asked a question about it – nor did we. It just simply never came up as a potential issue when we beta tested the game with early users.
Upside is, if you didn’t use the community feature, you’re OK.
Maybe we’ll see this application back in the App Store once the security issues are worked out. I played the game for a little bit, but not long enough to really have an opinion about it. Let us know in the comments how you feel about the game and the situation.
Oh, and to read the full article on Gizmodo, go here.
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\\ tags: Aurora Feint
Are there any other iPhone RPGs out there? I’ve been waiting for one and it makes me sad to know that this was one, but it was pulled before I got to pay it. :/
just vay. this wasnt an rpg it was a puzzle game.
Zenonia is an awesome action/rpg
meh game is alright, still have it on my phone. but then again do i really care if they have my contact list? hell let em have it, itll end with my friends getting hundreds of calls from telemarketers what more could a guy ask for?
Hey Guys,
I’m on of the developers on Aurora Feint. For the record, the contact list integration is an OPT-IN feature. Your contacts were never stored on our servers. For the full details on the issue check our official post on our forum:
http://aurorafeint.proboards100.com/index.cgi?board=crash&action=display&thread=346
[...] story over Aurora Feint iPhone Games Add comments In one of my last posts, I talked about how Aurora Feint had been removed from the App Store for security reasons. Well, as [...]